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Adam Scott deserves to be golf’s player of year

Tiger's cherry-picking of preferable tournaments worked against him

Adam Scott of Australia hits a shot during the Pro-Am round of the Hyundai Tournament of Champions at the Plantation Course at Kapalua Golf Club on January 2, 2014 in Lahaina, Hawaii. Photo: Tom Pennington/Getty Images

It’s not about who got picked for the U.S. Olympic hockey team Wednesday, but that Bobby Ryan and Keith Yandle did not.

It’s not about who’s going to be selected to Team Canada next Tuesday, but which amazingly talented and deserving forwards are left off the team.

Thursday’s snub du jour? Adam Scott being voted the male player of the year by the Golf Writers Association of America, ahead of Tiger Woods, who won five times in 2013.

Five PGA Tour wins versus two for Scott. What were we thinking?

As a voting member of that esteemed group, one of 218 who completed ballots, let me first say that I voted for Scott, meaning mine was one of the 75 reasons Woods lost out by five votes.

To millions of Tiger fans, the result will be an outrage: five PGA Tour wins versus two for Scott. What were we thinking?

To Tiger haters, who are also legion, it will be … I don’t know … karma or something: punishment for not being as good a person as Scott, or for his run-ins with the rules in 2013, or for going another season without winning a major, the only kind of tournament he really gives much of a damn about.

To Woods, who could teach a course to elephants on never forgetting, it will either be an unforgivable slight — in which case he will never again grant a revealing, one-on-one interview to a GWAA member (his next would be the first, in any case) — or an enormous relief, because he won’t have to pretend to enjoy the scribes’ company at the annual GWAA awards banquet during Masters week in April.

Tiger Woods of the U.S. Team waits on the18th tee during the Day Four Singles Matches at the Muirfield Village Golf Club on October 6, 2013 in Dublin, Ohio. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

More likely than either of the above, he couldn’t care less.

But here’s why Scott won, and why it’s different from the PGA Tour players’ ballot or that of the PGA of America — each of which voted Tiger for its year-end award.

Those two outfits only care about what happens in PGA Tour events. That’s fine; it’s their narrow view of the universe. But the golf writers vote on worldwide achievements — and on a global basis, what are we really talking about here?

Woods won five PGA Tour events, none of them majors, and the Tour money title and the Vardon Trophy for the lowest scoring average.

Scott not only became the first Aussie in history to win the Masters, but also won The Barclays (the largest field of the FedEx Cup playoffs), then won three more events Down Under in a brilliant run during November and December — the Australian PGA and Aussie Masters and the World Cup of Golf (with partner Jason Day) — and just missed completing his national Grand Slam when he finished second (by one stroke) in the Australian Open.

Of course, the strength of field in those Australian events isn’t what Woods faced in any of his five victories: the Farmers’ Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, the WGC Cadillac at Doral, the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, The Players at Sawgrass and the Bridgestone at Firestone CC.

On the other hand — and adding fuel to argument that the writers may be suffering, to a degree, from Tiger Fatigue — Woods’s 2013 wins other than The Players, where he has often struggled, came at courses where he has won a total of 27 times in his PGA Tour career. And though there’s nothing wrong with going back to venues that feel good and fit his game, Woods’s snubbing (that word again) of so many Tour events in favour of returning to his happy places does lend a note of cherry-picking to the whole enterprise.

If he occasionally patronized a few more of those tournaments that he appears to regard as beneath him, perhaps that part of his image would improve.

Adam Scott of Australia hits out of a bunker on the 15th hole during the final round of the World Cup of Golf at Royal Melbourne Golf Course in Australia. (AP Photo/Andy Brownbill)

Aha! So personal considerations did enter into the vote? It’s entirely possible — Scott is a through-and-through nice guy and a gentleman — though there would have to be a great many voting “purists” among the GWAA membership who would hold his use of the broomstick putter against him.

Also, if the GWAA has voted Woods its player of the year 10 times in the past, it’s hard to make the case that he was outpolled this year just because he’s not particularly likable. That didn’t just suddenly happen.

Besides, there were others who were in the race, and the vote was split four ways: Phil Mickelson won three times worldwide, including the Open Championship at Muirfield, his fifth major, and received 17 per cent of the votes. Henrik Stenson became the first player ever to win both the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup and the European Tour’s equivalent, the Race to Dubai, and earned 16 per cent. Scott topped the ballot at 34 per cent to 32 for Woods.

The Woods-versus-Scott vote probably came down to performance in majors, as much as anything. Scott, in addition to his Masters win, tied for third in the Open Championship and fifth at the PGA Championship. Woods was T-4 at Augusta and T-6 at Muirfield.

So the best argument of all may come from Golf Channel’s Jason Sobel: “Would Tiger trade his year to have another green jacket hanging in the closet? You betcha. Would Adam trade his for an extra trophy and greater consistency? No way.”

It came down to a vote, and a close one at that. Vive la difference.

A better question is how only 91 per cent of voters picked Korean star Inbee Park as the female player of the year when she won three consecutive LPGA majors? Now that, truly, is the basis for an argument.

Cam Cole came to The Vancouver Sun in 2005 after seven years in Toronto as the principal sports columnist of The National Post. Born in Vegreville, Alta., he began his sportswriting career at The Edmonton... read more Journal in 1975, and has been writing a daily sports column for the last 21 years.View author's profile